evaluation of different intercropping patterns of cumin (cuminum cyminum l.) and lentil (lens culinaris l.) in double crop

in order to evaluate the comparison of different intercropping patterns of cumin (cuminum cyminum l. ) with lentil (lens culinaris l.) in double crop, a field experiment was conducted based on a randomized complete block design with three replications and eight treatment at the farm located in west azerbaijan province - city nagadeh, iran during growing reason of 2011-2012. treatments included intra- row intercropping (50% cumin + 50% lentil), row intercropping (one row of lentil + one row of cumin) and strip intercropping (two rows of lentil + one rows of cumin, three rows of lentil + one rows of cumin, four rows of lentil + four two of cumin, six rows of lentil + two rows of cumin and pure lentil and cumin. intercropping patterns had significant effect on all of mentioned traits. results showed that the highest and the lowest economic yield of lentil were achieved in monoculture with 600 and 1600 kg.ha-1and six rows of lentil + two rows of cumin with 273 and 676 kg.ha-1, respectively. grain yield and biological yield were no significant differences at monoculture with row intercropping and intra- row intercropping. but with increasing strip widths of grain yield and biological yield decreased by 50 and 54 %, respectively. the essential oil percentage of all treatments was higher than monoculture. the highest essential oil yield was obtained of intra- row intercropping (20 kg.ha-1). results indicated that maximum (1.8) and minimum (0.94) ler values were obtained of row intercropping and strip intercropping (six rows of lentil + two rows of cumin), respectively. by changing row intercropping patterns to strip intercropping, ler was decreased due to complementary and facilitative effects in intercropping.